PaintShop Pro

This tutorial is for Paint Shop Pro. Paint Shop is user friendly, and its super cheap! $99! You can download a 30 day trial version of PaintShop Pro Version 7 for free Here! But, if you are one of those weirdos still using Windows 3.11, there is still Paintshop Pro version 3 Here! It will be fazed out. For International Versions of PSP go Here, http://www.jasc.com/intldl.asp?

 

 
|Simple 3D Text Effect|Silver Chrome text|

To do the following Tutorial, you will need a working version of Paint Shop Pro, version 4 or higher, and the following plug-in. Download it from one of the links provided and install in the appropriate plug-in folder.
 

Download -- Greg's Factory Output Vol. II filters for Windows Photoshop 'HERE!' (272K) Windows

Download -- Greg's Factory Output Vol. II filters for Macintosh Photoshop 'HERE!' (401K) Mac
I'm using windows. Things look different with Macintosh, but if you mess around a bit, I'm sure you can figure out the basic gist of it. Again, this is version PSP5. Things may look a little different in other PSP versions.

 

This Effect works best with big text and fat fonts

Gold is probably the most difficult color to mimic on the web, or any computer graffics where you view pictures on a monitor.
Step 1 -- Well to get this effect, Start with new image, white background.

Then Select the lightest color blue as the foreground from the basic colors on the right of your Paint Shop Pro (PSP) window.

To do this look at the picture on the left. Where I place the little red arrow pointing to the white square. In your PSP program, Click it with your pointer. That's the foreground color, and it will be the initial color you pick for your text.

Select the lightest blue from the basic colors in the boxes. The exact color I used was a hex color #C0FFFF.

So now you have your light blue selected, and a fresh blank white new picture. Now click on the text button. Looks like this

Now click inside the the whit picture and write some text. Use a fat text. I used "Impact" font at the bold setting.

If this so far is not giving you problems, you should be fine. If you are having trouble you need to learn some basics first, so go to the help file and find a tutorial or something for beginners.

Now at this stage you should have your very light blue large letters in a white background picture. There there should be a sort of dotted boarder around your lettering. Do not de-select it. That dotted boarder needs to be there meaning the text is selected.

 

So inside your PSP program you should have something that looks like this

Step 2
-- Ok Go back to the color selection like when you picked the light blue text color. This time change the light blue color to white.


Step 3
Go up the "image" dropdown menu from the top, and select "hot wax coating"


Looks like that when using PSP 5
In PSP 4 I belive the hot wax coating effect is in the "effects" folder. But it should be there somewhere.

Step 4
-- Now Repeat step 3, five more times. Your picture should now look like this


Step 5
-- Good now go up to the color menu, which is the fifth from the left at the top of your PSP 5 program. Select "Brightness/Contrast". Set the Brightness to 20, and the Contrast to 50. This is what mine looks like so far:


Step 6
-- This is where the magic occurs. Turn the text gold by going to the Image dropdown menu, go to plugins, and choose Gregs Factory Output vol II, and choose "colorize". Like it shows below:


Leave the default setting except the blue slider. Slide the blue control slider until the setting reads 112. You now have the gold color, and the text is still selected. You can play around with the settings next time, but for now just set blue at 112. Then clike "OK" or "done" or whatever they tell ya to do.

Open a new picture. Black this time. Paste the selected text from the white picture to the black picture (use "copy" from the white picture, and "paste as new selection" into the black.) The following picture is what you should have if you have done things correctly so far:


Step 7
Now for the Kool glowing effect. Its simple really. Go to dropshadow effect. That's in "image" drop-down menu, under "effects." Should not be hard to find. Choose white as the shadow color. The settings should be as follows:
Color: White
Opacity: 80
Blur: 20
Offset, Vertical: 1, Horizontal: 1.

Click "OK"

Repeat this step once with the same settings.

OK now repeat again, but this time change the Offset settings to Vertical: -1, Horizontal: -1. Just put little negative signs before the numbers.

Now that should have been a total of 3 drop-shadow effects combined.
 

That's it! Now roll on down and see what ya got.





 

Here is what you should now have:

I've also included a download for the first volume of Greg's Factory Output filters, in case you are interested. It's all free, of course.
Greg's Factory Output filters for Windows Photoshop (272K)
Greg's Factory Output filters for Macintosh Photoshop (441K)
The above plugin filters are standard Photo Shop plug-in filters. They work with Photo Shop, as well as Paintshop Pro. I'm working with Paint Shop version 5, however I believe is should also work with version 4 or 6, as well as any graffic program that supports Photo Shop plug-ins.

You can view samples of what these plugins can do at http://mars.ark.com/~gschorno/gfo/